1. So this comparison is based on Carl’s and Pete’s thoughtful corrections to my spin on Jim Ceaser’s more upbeat businessman vs. intellectual.
2. I agree with Jim that our president deserves to be classed a real intellectual. He wrote real books full of interesting thoughts. Plus he was a professor at a leading law school who fit in with the other professors. “We philosophers,” so to speak, know that all intellectuals are frauds. They define themselves with oversimplified and vague versions of ideas found in books they didn’t really read closely. All intellectuals are BS artists, and we professors are envious of their glib popularity and influence. It’s the job of “we scholars” to show that this president doesn’t know as much about the Constitution etc. as he thinks he does, but we might concede that he knows a few more details that, say, either President Bush. Most intellectuals fail or at least flail when they assume positions of real political responsibility. Their general ideas don’t help them much with real problems.
3. So I agree that the two intellectual vices displayed most prominently by the president are practical cluelessness and a somewhat despotic condescension for the moral opinions and aspirations of ordinary people. They go a long way to explaining why he shouldn’t be reelected. But I don’t think they make him hateful. He’s a decent, disciplined guy. (I continued to really like President Bush personally even during his most clueless and incompetent period.) (It’s impossible not to compare the president very favorably with his fellow Democrats the Clintons and the criminal John Edwards, although each of those three is arguably more savvy.)
4. That a third or more of the country hates the president seems to be correct. As a resident of a most white, semi-rural Georgia county, I”m surrounded by Obama hatred. Much of the hatred seems unreasonable for me, although I will join my neighbors, of course, in voting for Mitt.
5. That Romney is more a politician than a businessman, as Pete says, seems clear in the amount of time and intensity he’s devoted to each endeavor. He’s spent a lot more time in politics than, say, our president. More than that, he’s surely spent more of his money on his political ambition than he has even on his Mormon church. Still, when Mitt seriously talks policy (and he knows a whole lot for a presidential candidate and much more, I think, than Obama), he arguably thinks more like a businessman than any other recent candidate. Plus, his rhetoric is mostly about applying his business skills and perspective to solving our policy problems.
6. Pete is right to be concerned that the mixture of business acumen and flippy-floppy political views isn’t enough evidence that Mitt will be tough enough–and willing to risk being temporarily very unpopular–to give us the change that we really need. He might not be resolute enough just to tell the American people inconvenient truths that they really need to hear from someone they trust.
7. Dr. Parrino, in the thread, seems to criticize me (and Jim) for not appreciating the importance of Romney’s faithful Mormonism in assessing his character and personal identity. If I conveyed that impression, I certainly apologize. His Mormonism–and the high opinion Mormons have of him–is the best evidence that Mitt is a “real guy” with “core values” that will actually inform his leadership.
April 22nd, 2012 | 10:01 am
” That Romney is more a politician than a businessman, as Pete says, seems clear in the amount of time and intensity he’s devoted to each endeavor.” I’d say he is both (though Romney has spent a lot of time and enjoyed a lot of success as a businessman.) It is just that Romney’s style and political record (some of it as a losing candidate) make it tough to take seriously a pose as primarily a businessman as distinct from a politician with an impressive business background. But still a politician. When he went on about how he left the Massachusetts governorship because he wanted to go back into the private sector he came across as a satire of slick politician bs-ing the listener.
Though Romney partly comes across so slick because he really ISN”T that slick. If he were better at it, it wouldn’t be so obvious.
April 22nd, 2012 | 11:43 am
I think you should clairify that the President lectured at the U of Chicago Law school. He never taught there, conducted classes, did research (that produced material), or as far as I know he never wrote a single intellectual book. He did write 2 autobiographies.
Peter, I think you are lowering your standards a bit by calling the President an intellectual.
April 22nd, 2012 | 3:54 pm
JP, I think the thing Peter and Jim Ceaser are reminding us of is that as a category in social-role typology, “intellectual” can be defined very broadly. In the thread below this one, Ceaser says the threshold is basically, a) write a somewhat literary book, and b) think of yourself as a thinker.
And when I consider my impression that Obama is intellectually a good rung below even the typical anti-philosophic intellectual one finds in our professoriate, especially in terms of accomplishments and specialized reading, I must remind myself that he obviously is far more politically astute than they, and obviously was (read Stanley Kurtz) far more politically serious to begin with. So he almost certainly COULD have risen up to the level of typical college professor HAD HE WANTED TO. A lot of his story is a sad illustration of how the “affirmative-action dynamic” works in our society, but not that aspect of it.
Another day, I’m sure, we’ll discuss the “extreme distaste” the man stirs in so many of us. Peter and Jim are more philosophic and politically scientific than I, and maybe that explains their not feeling it.
April 22nd, 2012 | 6:40 pm
“A lot of his story is a sad illustration of how the “affirmative-action dynamic” works in our society, but not that aspect of it.”
Well, you’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head and I, for one, appreciate the courage, in the face of the p-c crowd, to honestly analyze this element of Obama’s rise to power. A full, open, and in depth analysis would be even better, assuming it could be published.
April 23rd, 2012 | 12:26 am
JP, you are correct that Obama was “lecturer” at Chicago, not a professor, but he did teach classes there. Also, as a law student at Harvard, he wrote two unsigned notes for the Harvard Law Review.
April 23rd, 2012 | 1:25 am
I believe Romney graduated with his Harvard JD and MBA degrees around 1976, so subtracting the year he was running against Ted Kennedy in 1994, he was a full time business consultant and company leader for 22 years before he resigned to take on the 2002 Olympics rescue in 1999. The next three years running that enterprise was focused on ensuring it made a profit, so again it adds to his business experience, making 25 years. His ten years since the 2002 campaign for governor added to 1994 gives 11 years as a politician. So not even counting his MBA studies, Romney’s work experience has been overwhelmingly in the business world.
It is also not obvious that Romney’s personal expenditures in political campaigns exceed his financial contributions to his church. He has been donating 10% of his income as a tithe his entire working life, including his post-retirement career as a politician, some 36 years. Granted that his income was not as high during the first 10 years, some 25 years at $2 million per year equals $50 million in tithes, and does not include other donations made to BYU, his alma mater. It also does not include any special donation Romney made toward the cost of building the Temple in his Boston neighborhood. My recollection of stories from the present campaign is that Romney has been able to rely on contributions to fund his current campaign, after having invested a lot of his personal funds in 2008 to make himself better known among the candidates. I don’t recall Romney donating into his campaigns an amount equal to even half of his tithes.
So the effort to use measures of time and personal funds to characterize Romney as “primarily a.politician” don’t seem to hold water.
Romney’s alleged “flip floppery” does not appear to be as large a change as it is usually depicted to be, and it has involved pretty much clear events denoting reasoned changes in position, not flipping back and forth on a recurring basis. If Chuck Colson can be accepted as changing from Watergate felon to Christian minister, why can’t the much simpler changes in view Romney experienced be accepted as genuine?
As you noted, the claim Romney is a “slick politician” has no credibility since true slick politicians like Bill Clinton are always praised for being “genuine”. Romney is often awkward because he does not speak in political cliches.
April 23rd, 2012 | 8:41 am
“He wrote real books full of interesting thoughts.”
I see no reason to believe this is true. As far as I know, roughly 100% of politicians use ghost-writers for their books, and only a very small fraction even today acknowledge it, and absolutely nothing in Obama’s life story suggests he’s very bookish at all, let alone capable of writing what people claim are two very accomplished autobiographies (all writers I’ve ever read about speak about how from a very early age, they wrote prodigiously and obsessively).
April 23rd, 2012 | 9:29 am
“Romney is often awkward because he does not speak in political cliches.”
Are you kidding?
April 23rd, 2012 | 1:41 pm
A blogger on a site called “Postmodern Conservative” says in dialogue with some other blogger that the President has “practical cluelessness and a somewhat despotic condescension for the moral opinions and aspirations of ordinary people.”
Please do go on…
April 23rd, 2012 | 6:42 pm
Raymond, you are right that Romney’s repeated electoral defeats extended his already lengthy career in business. And there was no shame (as such) in those defeats. Nobody ever beat Ted Kennedy in a Massachusetts Senate election and getting elected President is of course very difficult. He still a guy who has spent the last generation seeking political office off and on. That is one thing that makes his whole “just a businessman who got involved in politics” shtick so comically inept when he trots it out. Gingrich got in one of his best and truest shots when he called Romney out on Romney’s contention that he left the governorship of Massachusetts to return to the private sector. This is aggravated by Romney’s smarmy style when he makes that contention.
“If Chuck Colson can be accepted as changing from Watergate felon to Christian minister, why can’t the much simpler changes in view Romney experienced be accepted as genuine?” Well I guess we can differ on our personal views on whether Romney’s abortion conversion (which occurred between seeking the vote of the pro-choice Massachusetts electorate and the mostly pro-life Republican presidential nominating electorate) was based on a conversation with a doctor or political expediency. I do note that I’ve yet to see a Romney political conversion that isn’t in the direction of his short-term political best interests. Colson stepped away from formal government power and dedicated decades of his life to the ministry. Colson did not change his views in a way that helped his chances of winning higher elected office. The less said about that comparison the better.
“Romney is often awkward because he does not speak in political clichés.” Romney is often awkward because he can’t quite convince people that his switches of position aren’t cynical. Though he deserves credit for taking the time to fashion fairly coherent prepared remarks (something Santorum didn’t usually do.)
April 23rd, 2012 | 9:31 pm
Romney, Shomney, I just saw the Minnesota delegate vote. Better blog on this….lol!
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